Sunday, January 31, 2016

Sent to the New York Times, Jan. 31President Obama has called for "a Deeper Commitment to Computer Education," (January 30), proposing that $4 billion be invested in computer science education. In the past, these proclamations were based on the assumption that there is a serious shortage of technology-trained workers in the US. This claim has been shown to be false. In fact, there is a surplus. Now the message is that computer knowledge is needed in many professions. (The president mentioned auto mechanics and nursing.) But this is computer use, and does not require knowing how to program and design software. It requires knowing how to use specific programs. It is not "computer science," just as driving a car does not require deep knowledge of auto mechanics. Nevertheless, the president emphasized programming and learning to code, "computer science for all."My daughter has pointed out to me that to learn how to use many programs, all you need is a good friend to show you how. I was not surprised to read that the president of Microsoft thought the president's proposal was a good idea.Stephen KrashenProfessor Emeritus, University of Southern California

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Ever heard of an adjunct K-12 teacher? I had not, either, until Alabama defined it for me, as someone with at least a high school diploma teaching part-time in an Alabama public school.

Someone who is not a certified teacher can now teach your children in Alabama.

The State Board of Education approved a new category of educators called adjunct teachers.

The board says it is a way to solve the teacher shortage in Alabama for certain subjects.

An adjunct teacher is someone who has worked in a career field other than education, will work part time under a licensed teacher and has a high school diploma or equivalent.

Katy Bryan is a mother of two elementary school kids in Huntsville. In theory, under the new resolution, her kids could soon be taught by someone who does not have a state teaching certification. Bryan has some concerns with the idea.

"I think that they probably need to have a teaching certificate because just because they're knowledgeable about a subject might not mean that they're skilled at teaching techniques," Bryan said.

Mary Scott Hunter sits on the State School Board who approved the resolution. Hunter represents District 8 which includes Madison, Limestone, Jackson, DeKalb and Etowah Counties in Alabama. She says the goal is to find people to fill specialized classes like welding, because those can be hard for a district to fill.

Beverly Sims is the District 3 Director for the Alabama Education Association, who represents Madison County, Madison City, J.F. Drake Technical College and John C. Calhoun Community College.

Sims says she is okay with the idea of adjunct teachers for career tech classes, but is worried that some of these adjunct teachers might not be fully prepared to handle the challenges of a classroom.

"Classroom management and the various learning styles of the kids and the biggest problem is going to be learning the federal laws and the state laws," Sims said.

While Bryan says she has concerns as a parent, she says there could be a place for adjunct teachers.

"I think there could be advantages like a lot of engineers in our area are good at mathematics, physics and those types of topics," Bryan said.

WAAY 31 reached out to some area school districts. Huntsville City Schools and Madison City Schools spokesmen say the resolution is on their radar, but the people who can talk on the issue weren't available Monday.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Last spring Tennessee passed a limited school voucher bill that offers just over $6,000 per year to disabled students who, otherwise, would attend public schools. Ostensibly, the purpose of the legislation was to give parents more educational choices for their special needs children.

Since private schools are not bound by federal requirements, these bargain basement vouchers are only available to students whose parents are willing to give up most of their educational rights secured by IDEA. Governor Haslam was quick to sign the bill into law.

To borrow from Jonathan Kozol, the day that Tennessee conservatives are willing to give every poor child in Tennessee a $30,000 voucher to attend Ensworth School or Montgomery Bell Academy, that's the day I will become a Republican.

Until such time, we should all call publicly out the hypocrites in the state legislature who mouth words about helping poor children, as they continue to refuse to provide full funding of the Basic Education Program for Tennessee's public school children. Tennessee's abysmal record for funding public schools (ranks 47th in 2015) goes hand-in-hand with the legislative determination to further limit better educational options in the name of a phony cheap choice.

Monday, January 25, 2016

Today in professional development meetings all over the country teachers are learning the virtues of "proficiency based learning," which is sometimes referred to as "competency based" education (CBE), and sometimes referred to as "personalized learning," and sometimes referred to as "self-paced computer assisted learning," and sometimes even referred to as more Gates Foundation-sponsored bullshit. The dream of teacher proof schools has been around for more than a hundred years, and it became an obsession after early 20th Century "reformers" took Frederick Winslow Taylor's idea of scientific management of job tasks and tried to apply those concepts and methods to educational tasks.

What has always stood in the way of the perfect system of efficient rote learning, however, has been the caring and inefficient teacher whose understanding of child needs has always intruded upon the requirements of the most measurably efficient delivery system. (See Part 1 of The Mismeasure of Education for the skinny on the social efficiency movement during the early 20th Century).Among business elites, social managers, and entrepreneurial opportunists, the dream of teacherless learning is very much alive today, and with the financial help of arrogant billionaires like Bill Gates and back-slapping, deal-making middle men like Duke Albanese of Maine, it is being tried on a large scale once more in states like Maine. In fact, competency-based computer assisted parrot learning promises is planned as a principal delivery system for the Common Core that Gates has spent billions to promote. CBE promises to be a primary tool to get back that money and more for tech companies.

The conduit from Gates to the classroom in Maine flows through financially-connected front groups like the Great Schools Partnership, and the "Duke" occupies positions on that Boards of Directors and others linked to Gates money. As a former Commissioner of Education in Maine, he knows how to use influence and to get Gates money from Point A to B to C and, of course, to the D.Below is a letter from Duke to his new friend, Tom Vander Ark in 2002, when Duke was Commissioner of Education and Vander Ark was head of the Gates Foundation.

It is important because it threw open the door to the massive experiment underway today on the children of Maine today.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

When you think there is nothing more that charter school titan, Eva Moskowitz, could say to top her previous litany of dehumanizing gut punches to the poor children or parents of New York who have made her fabulously wealthy, she comes through with another incredible utterance that shows her unsuitability to be in charge of a dog pound or even a worm farm, not to mention dozens of schools filled with vulnerable and needy children.

At the end of a piece in the Times that describes her snarling response to parents who have sued Success Academy for ignoring their disabled children's rights under IDEA, she had this to say about the inhumane methods used to teach children they are responsible for the academic shortcomings that are entirely predictable for children trapped by poverty:

“We find in schooling that kids are resilient. You know, they sometimes get upset when they don’t do well, and many people think that’s a tragedy.”

“But,” she said, “Olympic athletes, when they don’t do well, they sometimes cry. It’s not the end of the world.”

Really, Eva? Is there any cry from any animal, human or otherwise, that could reach the bottom of your emptiness?

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Diane Ravitch's capacity for subtle manipulation has allowed her to put together an army of bloggers and commenters, all of whom would, doubtless, march off to battle the corporate education reformers if talk had legs. Just like the pronouncements of their FairTest predecessors, however, NPE and Ravitch's political movements are encased by the corporate leadership of NEA and AFT, whom they must either mimic or allow to take the lead in any matters related to moving against the rephormist status quo that continues to be supplemented by millions of corrupting dollars from philanthrocapitalists.One thing Ravitch cannot stand is criticism of her conservative permanent basecamp posed as a revolutionary front, and she is known to use any method at her disposal to silence critics and/or to discredit them. The most recent example comes in her defense of FairTest, whose history of depending upon the kindnesses of collaborationist insiders and corporate foundation front groups recently came under scrutiny as a result of FairTest's unerring advocacy for ESSA, the new states rights version of ESEA. With FairTest's continuing defense of the indefensible ESSA and FairTest's silence on the dangers of competency based assessments and the thousands of new charter schools that ESSA guarantees, FairTest has moved beyond the role of celebrating the accomplishments of real activists that Bob Schaeffer made famous.Ravitch is incensed that I and others would question the sanctity of FairTest, and she has called us out to her online principal's office to account for our indiscretion. In doing so, she has made up a story that Jim Horn, Mary Porter, and Emily Talmage have accused FairTest of accepting cash from the Gates Foundation, which Ravitch says that FairTest has acknowledged. Unfortunately, this is untrue. Whether intentional or simply the sloppy work of a Ravitch's underling, readers must know that I have never made such a claim, nor have I read such a charge by either of the other purported miscreants called out by Ravitch. I have pointed out that FairTest has received grants from both NEA and Nellie Mae, and that its political position is defined by the positions that Washington corporatists allow for NEA and AFT. So when you hear Diane or fellow campers talk about "big tents," "standing together," and "harmony among allies," know that someone has, 1) intruded upon truths that should remain mysteries, or 2) called out Diane or one her acolytes or emissaries for sleeping with the enemy. And know, too, that in order to talk to Diane, you must play by her rules. Otherwise, pipe down. As she told Mary Porter in comments at her blog when it became apparent that Mary would not be contained by Ravitch's smarmy oppression,

Mary, enough. I asked for harmony among allies. I never told Emily to shut up nor did I call her toxic. Stop attacking your allies.

At the heart of the Edison Project is an idea that also guides the strategy developed under Education Secretary Lamar Alexander, a former business associate of Mr. Whittle. It is hopeless to expect change from within this school system, this reasoning runs, so parents must be given the weapon of choice to force changes in public schools.

Indeed, the prime architect of the Bush strategy, Chester E. Finn Jr., is a longtime critic of public schools who is now a member of the Edison Project's design team.

Although Mr. Whittle's schools would be private, his Edison Project is remarkably similar to Mr. Alexander's New American Schools proposal to create 535 radically different public schools, one in each Congressional district and two in each state, which would then spur other schools to change. Later this summer the New American Schools Development Corporation will give out privately financed grants to design teams, many of whom have suggested proposals similar to Mr. Whittle's.

Thanks to the Times reporting, Congress pulled the plug on this corrupt scheme, which could have been the first example of federal money going to fund privately-run schools.

Almost 25 years later, Alexander is now in the catbird's seat in terms of his long-standing desire to privatize public schools, and he is not about to miss this opportunity. And even though Diane Ravitch has ostensibly undergone a conversion from her earlier preaching of the corporate dogma, she and Lamar remain very close.

One may quibble with details, but the bottom line is that this bill defangs the U.S. Department of Education; it no longer will exert control over every school with mandates. This bill strips the status quo of federal power to ruin schools and the lives of children and educators. This is a far better bill than I had hoped or feared.

Ravitch lieutenant and NPE Board member, Dr. Heilig, rashly boasted recently on Facebook that he had known the details of ESSA before it was rushed through, but that he was sworn to secrecy. When a Facebook reader suggested that his silence signaled complicity with this awful legislation, he responded by saying that, as a mere academic, he had no power to alter the course of history. (The children who become prisoners of chain gang charters in the years to come may surely question such a rationalization.) I guess you could say he was only following orders.

Who will question Diane Ravitch on her continued silence on the massive charter expansion guaranteed by ESSA? Recently, Alexander told Ed Week,

“What I believe is that when we take the handcuffs off, we’ll unleash a
whole flood of innovation and ingenuity classroom by classroom, state by
state, that will benefit children,” Alexander said in an interview.
“We’ve got a law that will govern the federal role in K-12 education for
10 or 20 years.”

For Diane's part, she has just posted Part IV of a series where she asked, in writing, softball questions to Alexander's office about ESSA, which were were answered by Alexander's Chief of Staff. How long can she pretend to not know what is coming from ESSA in the months and years ahead? How long can she blame others for policies that she supports?

But the more serious question is, how long will those who still believe in public schools believe in the misleadership of Diane Ravitch and the neoliberal agenda she represents?

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Diane Ravitch has posted a response by FairTest to recent commentary by Emily Talmage that shines a light on the close connections among FairTest, Citizens for Public Schools, the Center for Collorative Education, AFT/NEA, and corporate cash.

I have pasted the post below, along with revealing comments by Mary Porter and others, who provide further details about the secretive connections that allow the corporate foundations and corporate unions to coopt, undercut, and neutralize honest efforts to reclaim public education to benefit children and what is left of our democracy.You will note that it does not take Diane Ravitch but a moment to jump into the discussion to condemn anyone who criticizes her own willingness to include arsonists inside the anti-corporate reform tent.

It must be noted that, while Ravitch prefers a big tent that includes corporate collaborators, she has been quick to exclude yours truly from her tent. I was barred from commenting at her blog when it became evident to Ravitch and NPE that their complicity with AFT's pro-corporate agenda was no longer a secret. It is good, finally, to see that others are reaching the the same conclusions and are unafraid to share them.Read and understand. From Diane Ravitch at the Ravitch blog:

Lisa
Guisbond of Fairtest wrote to inform me that the opt out movement in
Massachusetts is growing and has noconnection [sic] whatever to the Gates
Foundation. As we know, state officials are terrified of a massive
parent opt out; they threaten, they cajole, they will try anything to
con parents into staying away from opt out. The most powerful tool that
parents have is opt out. The state can’t force your child to take the
test. Parents have the Power of No.

Fairtest released this statement.

“This Saturday’s opt-out meeting is sponsored by Citizens for Public
Schools and the Less Testing, More Learning Campaign and will be at the
office of Center for Collaborative Education (CCE), 33 Harrison Ave.,
Boston, 6th floor.

“Because the meeting is at CCE, a few people have attacked LTML,
Citizens for Public Schools and the meeting itself in a blog and on
Facebook. It will take a lot of focused, hard work to get a strong
opt-out campaign going. We want to include as many interested people as
possible and don’t want misguided attacks to undermine and confuse
activists. But because such attacks are circulating (in MA and even in
other states), and to avoid confusion and damage, we want to clarify a
few things.
“First, the main basis for the attacks is the list of funders on the CCE
website, which includes Gates, the Boston Foundation, Barr and Nellie
Mae. Dan French from CCE (who is on the CPS board and has for decades
battled against MCAS and for locally-controlled performance assessment)
has been open about when CCE received specific grants and for what. The
Gates and Boston Foundation grants are not current (e.g., a Gates grant
in 2000 to develop pilot schools, a Boston Foundation grant to support
pilot schools granted before Boston Foundation switched to boosting
charters).

[As Emily Talmage pointed out in comments below, it is not true that Gates grants are only somewhere in the dusty past:

But I digress.]

“At a minimum, attacking a meeting and a campaign because we are using
an organization’s space is very misguided politics. Beyond that, CCE and
Dan have been long-standing allies in the testing resistance and reform
movement.

“These attacks are an unfortunate distraction. We’d rather use our
energy and resources to build a strong opt-out campaign to stop the
misuse and abuse of testing in our schools. We look forward to working
with others who share these goals.”

CCE works at the state, district and school levels to create
professional learning communities of educators who are deeply engaged in
the work of continuous improvement. Data-based inquiry with an equity
lens is at the heart of our work, with a particular focus on the
challenges that most impact curriculum design, instruction, and
assessment.”http://cce.org/about/data-driven-inquiry

Dan French, Executive director of the Center for Collaborative
Education, has in fact sat on the board of CPS for years. Lisa’s salary
is split between Fairtest and CPE, and there is considerable other
organizational overlap.

French did indeed attend the Opt Out launch meeting personally, and
attempted to take a leading role, pitching his organization’s
data-driven embedded accountability products as part of the opt out
movement.

Other participants spoke out against French’s proposals. It actually
took some courage, because as you can see, there is now a Fairtest
campaign to discredit opponents. It’s those people Lisa is attacking in
this letter.

We are going forward full force with the Massachusetts Opt Out
movement, and are determined to insulate it from exploitation by
Fairtest and CPE’s data-driven partners.

Mary Porter,
I think it is poisonous for supporters of opt out to make war on one
another. Sectarian fights are the plague of progressive movements. The
best hope for success is a big tent with many groups working together.

Diane, it is you and Fairtest who are attacking the honest people working in this movement.

I’ve worked with CPS for years. I always though it was just their
association with the “Teacher Union Reform Network”, that made them so
limited. Lisa once told a conference workshop we couldn’t publicly
support parent actions against the Boston public school closings,
because we “couldn’t get out ahead of the unions”, which support CPS
financially.

This is sad but true. Please don’t attack Emily for her courage in
following through on it, or the parents who spoke up at this meeting.

The Boston Federation of Teachers, and the MTA under former
presidents Toner and Waas, were major players in supporting the
disastrous Massachusetts education reform legislation of 2010 and 2012.http://www.turnweb.org/about/

I’m sorry, Christine, I know it’s the Boston Teachers Union. I’m
working hard to present these links cogently, and again I apologize. I
had been working to support the Minneapolis effort for several hours.

But you know I am raising a real issue. Unity behind corrupted
insider influence doesn’t strengthen our movement. Please take a
minute to open this this link and for once, somebody, please address the
content. Defend it if you find it defensible, as apparently Diane
does.

We have to free our own organizations from this river of dark money,
because it delivers our public schools again and again into their grip..

Principal Member Union Locals

The National Teacher Union Reform Network members represent a total of 30 AFT and NEA locals:

Nellie Mae, current funder of the Centr for Collaborative
Education, is a huge money laundering conduit for the Gates Foundation.
Emily Talmage describes how she traced it.
“within a very short time, it became unmistakably obvious that the
Common Core Standards, our new Smarter Balanced test, and Maine’s one of
a kind (but not for long if they have their way, so watch out!)
proficiency-based diploma mandate were all linked like pieces of a
puzzle to a corporate-driven agenda to transform our schools into
“personalized” (digital!) learning environments. (If you’re not sure
what I’m talking about, see here for more.)

Quite literally sick to my stomach, I emailed a union rep to ask if he knew anything about the paper I had found.

“It’s ghastly,” he replied, “but in Maine, it has been the Nellie Mae
Education Foundation and the Great Schools Partnership that has been
behind these policies.”

Principals closely observe teachers in their classrooms, help them
improve their teaching and encourage them to collaborate with other
teachers.

Teachers who are not motivated to participate in the school‟s turnaround
efforts frequently leave voluntarily to avoid close scrutiny; if not,
and they are persistently ineffective, they must be removed.xv

If you follow their web pages, you’ll see that Fairtest has become
affiliated with an organization called The Forum on Educational
Accountability, which is using it as a mouthpiece to promote turnaround
models. These are the new participatory, personalized formative
accountability products already rolled out for the new ESEA.

THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE ALREADY DOING TO HOLYOKE AND LAWRENCE

From Fairtest’s “Forum on Educational Accountability”
“FEA Recommendations for Successful School Turnaround Efforts”
“See the FEA statement, “A Research- and Experience-Based Turnaround
Process,” that focuses on flexible local use of elements common to
school improvement, and that Congress should include in ESEA/NCLB
reauthorization.”
“See Ratner and Neill, “Common Elements of Successful Turnarounds:
Research and Experience,” for analysis and summary of research on
successfully improving schools.”http://www.edaccountability.org/

Working with other groups in Testing Resistance and Reform Spring to
help local activist builds their campaigns and link up with one another.

Leading the national Forum on Educational Accountability, which seeks
to overhaul the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act/No Child
Left Behind and related programs.http://www.fairtest.org/about

By its name FairTest believes in educational standards and
standardized testing. Bob S pooh pawed Wilson’s study both times I
brought it up with him at the NPE conferences. My take is that the
folks at fairtest are those who have benefited from those standardized
tests and therefore the tests are valid and good (which we know they are
not) I’ve gotten a very GAGA take on testing from them.

Thank you or being awake, Duane. Hi, I’m just chemtchr using my own name now.
Fairtest’s argument in conferences and workshops has been that
“accountability isn’t going away”, and we would expose ourselves to
opposition if we argued against the concept. They promoted an
accountability system of “locally-controlled performance assessment”,
which has now merged with the corporate NextGen competency-based
wraparound products Emily Talmage has seen implemented in Maine..

This letter is part of an aggressive attack, against parents and
teachers in Massachusetts and Maine who have been active and effective
long before Fairtest’s sudden corporate-sponsored conversion to Opt Out.

No, they were not transparent about their alliances or funding until
Emily Talmage (and I) pointed it out. Shame on them for disrespecting
that courage.

Far from merely offering a nice office, “Center for Collaborative
Education” tried to hijack the movement, and put forth a campaign to
lobby the state for imposition of his data-driven embedded assessment by
force of law, as part of Opt-Out!.

Parents did have to stand up to Dan French at the Opt-Out launch
meeting, where CCE and Fairtest tried to dominate and co-opt a much
larger authentic popular movement.
“a few people have attacked”
“misguided attacks to undermine and confuse activists.”
” attacking a meeting and a campaign”
“to avoid confusion and damage”
“an unfortunate distraction”
” poisonous for supporters of opt out to make war ”
” Sectarian fights are the plague”

Daring to follow their corporate money and challenge their corporate
agenda is not “toxic”, as no less than Diane Ravitch now accuses on
their behalf.

Opt-Out Massachusetts is going to move forward without their control.

An honest answer from Fairtest would be,

“Okay, we will support this movement even if we can’t dominate it, and
we promise will allow activists to assure that Opt Out listings are
independently controlled, and will never be be diverted to lobbying for
corporate “alternative assessment” legislation”.

Anyone whose eyes are open to where the next phase of education
reform is headed knows why the end of year tests have to go. Folks like
Tom Vander Ark cannot move ahead with competency-based education and
constant data-mining with stealth assessments if states hold onto end of
the year tests and Johnny is four months ahead of Sally. They want to
be able to mine all of Johnny’s and Sally’s data in real time.Their own
planning documents say as much.
I have been active in Opt Out in Philadelphia for several years. I
wondered through much of last year why our Broad superintendent didn’t
try harder to squash us. In fact, District officials were very
accommodating, almost like they wished us well in our endeavors. I
simply couldn’t figure it out until Obama did his song and dance about
high-stakes testing right after appointing King AND our District wanted
to start an Assessment Task Force to look into these “bad” tests.
About the same time I began to uncover the extensive groundwork that
had been laid for CBE. It’s all throughout New England. I reached out to
those I know at Fairtest to say that the work they were doing/had done
was in the process of being co-opted. Sad to me, they did not seem very
open to considering the implications of CBE as it related to what they
were doing. They are very smart people. I can’t speak to why they chose
not to hear or see it, but there it is. They can’t say they weren’t
notified.

CBE and Mass Customized Learning is being rolled out across New
England right now. The end of the end-of-the-year big test is
inextricably linked to CBE. Wake up people. Wake up. I am not going to
stop talking about opt out with parents, because kids shouldn’t be
taking these harmful tests, and they don’t have to. Plus, it is an easy
entry point that empowers parents. But it is going to have to move way
beyond that if we have any chance to stop the grand, scary plans that
folks at Global Education Futures have planned for us.

The powers that be, including it seems many familiar faces, are going
to do what they want no matter what. Sure it would be convenient for
them to be able to point to very high opt out numbers and say, see we
knew those tests were “bad” and parents know it, too. Now, we are going
to do “better” tests online with real time actionable data that measures
the whole child including socio-emotional data and we’ll measure them
ALL year, so they don’t have to stress about end of year tests.

The players involved are too numerous to count. The wield great
power. They’ve built some unexpected alliances. It’s all starting to
come out now that the ESSA has passed and plans made in back rooms can
roll out publicly. There is a lot of money in the mix. I think some
people may think that they can influence these forces and mitigate the
harm, but I honestly think that is entirely the wrong approach.

I am helping facilitate an Inquiry to Action Group this spring in
Philadelphia about reclaiming authentic assessment, but the first part
will be understanding this new education landscape and the players
involved. People ask me often, how did you find out all of this? My
answer is that it isn’t hidden. These folks are very proud of what they
are doing, and if you know the right words and who the players are, it’s
all over the internet. Here’s my draft word list. Feel free to get in
there and poke around and see what you find. I keep turning up amazing
things. So many hands are in on this. This goodie if from this morning, a
2012 discussion document from the Future of Museums Initiative of the
American Alliance of Museums. We are headed for dystopia if we don’t
take the time to recognize their game and stop it. So many pieces are
already in place: http://www.aam-us.org/docs/default-source/annual-meeting/exploring-the-educational-future.pdf?sfvrsn=0

I realize I am implicated in all of this. As a teacher, mother, and
staunch opt-out advocate, I assure readers that I have no intention of
harming this authentic grassroots effort – only to bring more clarity
to what is a far more complex movement than many realize. For now, I
just want to point out the following: The defense above is not
accurate. It claims that CCE grants from Gates are not current, but this
is untrue. A quick search of the Gates Foundation’s awarded grants
section reveals a grant of 350k made in 2014. Also, the Nellie Mae
Education Foundation, which has served as a funnel for Gates money and
is part of the corporate push toward competency-based education, awarded
FairTest 5k for a “performance assessment” event.

We know, of course, that NCLB was never designed to achieve its ostensible goal to close the achievement gaps. But it did succeed mightily in achieving its unacknowledged goal of privatizing great swaths of the public education landscape. At a time when corporate apologists are trying to paper over the privatization extravaganza that NCLB initiated, it is worthwhile to recall this piece.

And so, "No Child Left Behind: Doomed to Fail?" by Claudia Willis:

There was always something slightly insane about No Child Left Behind
(NCLB), the ambitious education law often described as the Bush
Administration's signature domestic achievement. For one thing, in the
view of many educators, the law's 2014 goal — which calls for all public
school students in grades 4 through 8 to be achieving on grade level in
reading and math — is something no educational system anywhere on earth
has ever accomplished. Even more unrealistic: every kid (except for 3%
with serious handicaps or other issues) is supposed to be achieving on
grade level every year, climbing in lockstep up an ever more challenging
ladder. This flies in the face of all sorts of research showing that
children start off in different places academically and grow at
different rates.
Add to the mix the fact that much of the promised funding failed to
materialize and many early critics insisted that No Child Left Behind
was nothing more than a cynical plan to destroy American faith in public
education and open the way to vouchers and school choice.

Now a former official in Bush's Education department is giving at least
some support to that notion. Susan Neuman, a professor of education at
the University Michigan who served as Assistant Secretary for Elementary
and Secondary Education during George W. Bush's first term, was and
still is a fervent believer in the goals of NCLB. And she says the
President and then Secretary of Education Rod Paige were too. But there
were others in the department, according to Neuman, who saw NCLB as a
Trojan horse for the choice agenda — a way to expose the failure of
public education and "blow it up a bit," she says. "There were a number
of people pushing hard for market forces and privatization."

Tensions between NCLB believers and the blow-up-the-schools group were
one reason the Bush Department of Education felt like "a pressure
cooker," says Neuman, who left the Administration in early 2003. Another
reason was political pressure to take the hardest possible line on
school accountability in order to avoid looking lax — like the Clinton
Administration. Thus, when Neuman and others argued that many schools
would fail to reach the NCLB goals and needed more flexibility while
making improvements, they were ignored. "We had this no-waiver policy,"
says Neuman. "The feeling was that the prior administration had given
waivers willy-nilly."

It was only in Bush's second term that the hard line began to succumb to
reality. Margaret Spellings, who replaced Paige as Secretary of
Education in 2005, gradually opened the door to a more flexible and
realistic approach to school accountability. Instead of demanding
lockstep, grade-level achievement, schools in some states could meet the
NCLB goals by demonstrating adequate student growth. (In this "growth
model" approach, a student who was three years behind in reading and
ended the year only one year behind would not be viewed as a failure.)
"Going to the growth models is the right way to go," says Neuman. "I
wish it had come earlier. It didn't because we were trying to be tough."

Neuman also regrets the Administration's use of humiliation and shame as
a lever for school reform. Failure to meet NCLB's inflexible goals
meant schools would be publicly labeled as failures. Neuman now sees
this as a mistake: "Vilifying teachers and saying we are going to shame
them was not the right approach."

The combination of inflexibility and public humiliation for those not
meeting federal goals ignited so much frustration among educators that
NCLB now appears to be an irreparably damaged brand. "The problems
lingered long enough and there's so much anger that it may not be
fixable," says Neuman. While the American Federation of Teachers was
once on board with the NCLB goals, she notes, the union has turned
against it. "Teachers hate NCLB because they feel like they've been
picked on."
Is there a way out of the mess? Neuman still supports school
accountability and the much-maligned annual tests mandated by the law.
But she now believes that the nation has to look beyond the schoolroom,
if it wishes to leave no child behind.

Along with 59 other top educators, policymakers and health
officials--including three former surgeon generals, she's put her name
to a nonpartisan document to be released on Tuesday by the Economic
Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. Titled "A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education,"
it lays out an expansive vision for leveling the playing field for
low-income kids, one that looks toward new policies on child health and
support for parents and communities. The document states that much of
the achievement gap between rich and poor "is rooted in what occurs
outside of formal schooling," and therefore calls on policymakers to
"rethink their assumptions" about what it will take to close that gap.
Neuman says that money she's seen wasted on current programs, including
much of the massive Title 1 spending should be reallocated according to
this broader approach. "Pinning all our hopes on schools will never
change the odds for kids."

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

. . . . For almost five decades, Flint drew its water from the city of Detroit’s water system, but concerns about high prices from Detroit helped lead to a switch. The city’s mayor at the time, Dayne Walling, encouraged leaders to “toast” the switch with a taste of the “regular, good, pure drinking” water, the governor’s emails show.

The mood grew less upbeat as time went on. People talked about smells and rashes. Residents carried jugs of brownish water to meetings. One state legislator warned the governor in a letter that his constituents were “on the verge of civil unrest.”

At points, the water was found to have bacterial contamination, and then disinfectant used to kill the bacteria caused a chemical contamination. Even after those problems were resolved, many residents said the water was bad.

Within months of the switch, a General Motors engine plant in Flint found that the city’s water had corroded parts, and stopped using it. A hospital saw that the water was damaging its instruments, and stepped up its own filtering and use of bottled water, as did a local university.

Still, officials seemed slow to respond. In one memo for the governor from February 2015, officials played down the problems and spoke of “initial hiccups.”

“It’s not ‘nothing,’ ” the memo said, adding that the water was not an imminent “threat to public health.” It also suggested that Flint residents were concerned with aesthetics. . . .

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Reactingto the news from Oxfam that the richest 62
billionaires are worth as much as half the world's population, a coalition of
the top five billionaires announced today that they were pleased with their
progress in cornering so much wealth but "much more needs to be
done."

Noting
that as recently as 2010, it took 388 billionaires to match the worth of half
the world's population, a coalition proclaimed that its goal now was to reduce
this number from the current 62 to five: "We will renew our efforts to
build our fortunes, " a coalition spokesperson explained. "Our
experts are constantly searching for new tax havens, and we will continue our
efforts to keep wages down and eliminate costly benefits for workers."

"We
are particularly pleased with our efforts to divert public funds to our corporations,
especially in the area of education.We
are pleased with our plan and the results: A strong public relations campaign
to convince the public that teachers are incompetent, and are, in fact,
responsible for most economic problems throughout the world, and a parallel
campaign informing the public of the wonders of computers.

We have
easily convinced the public that computers are the answer to most of their
problems, and will magically improve education. We have also convinced nearly
everybody that there is a serious shortage of technically-trained
computer-savvy workers in all fields, which of course encourages more computer
use in schools.It is then a simple
thing to begin to replace teachers with computers: We have had great success
doing this with flipped classrooms, and the new trend we began toward
competency-based instruction is the next step."

At the
same time, we have managed to encourage elimination of due process for teachers,
seniority-based payraises, and, of course, with flipped classrooms and
competency-based education, we have significantly reduced the need for
teachers. This means, of course, that the billions in tax dollars now spent on
teacher salaries and benefits will go to our companies, which we think is a
much better investment.

Question
from a reporter: "Several scholars have said that none of this has any
basis in the research: In fact, research comes to opposite conclusions on all
these issues: There have been regular reports showing that there is no shortage
of technical workers, that teachers are in general quite competent, and that
computer-based instruction has not been shown to be effective.Are you aware of this?"

Coalition
spokesperson: "These discouraging conclusions do not disturb us because
the public has little chance of finding out about them. By the time they do, we
will have achieved our goal of bringing our number down to five:The worth of
only five of us will equal the net worth of half the world's population."

Monday, January 18, 2016

It is great to be back home and living in Nashville, which is to Tennessee what Austin is to Texas--a small blue dot surrounded by poor red counties where the majority of people who vote still vote their whiteness over their best economic interests.

And so the real regrettable part of living here has to do with state politics, which is controlled by ALEC and run by a new crop of corporate welfare dimwits who would be looking for assistant managers' jobs at Walmart if it were not for the sponsorship of billionaires and Wall Street scumbags who buy state legislative offices for these new Brooks Bros. hillbillies.

Last week I was downtown with a few platoons of good folks protesting the continued refusal by the state legislature and our corrupt oilman governor to accept free Medicaid money that would insure 280,000 Tennesseans if it were not for carefree know-nothings who parade around the Capitol as if they owned the place. Which I guess they do until such time as Tennesseans awaken from their tea slumber party to find their government owned by corporate interests. See Michigan, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, etc. etc, where the deep sleep continues.

This week the Tennessee Taliban majority in the General Assembly has made news once again. This time they have passed a school voucher bill that gives special education students a few thousand dollars to attend a privately-run school if the students' parents will give up all their rights under IDEA. Andy Spears has the story. Read it and read it again to believe it.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

All of the available research on the intellectual, moral, and social value of school integration underscores the bald hypocrisy of the corporate segregationists who insist that they are interested in raising achievement and character among poor children.

If the charter school empire builders were simply interested in test performance (never mind their civil rights cynicism), these businessmen would be fashioning their schools around diversity.

But, of course, the white venture philanthropists' policies must abide by the paternalistic social control mechanism that binds any of their decisions regarding pedagogy or any other social institution.

Based on the spring results of the California Smarter Balanced assessments, the Los Angeles Unified School District recently announced that 55 percent of the district's magnet students met or exceeded state standards in English/language arts, compared with 39 percent in charters, 33 percent in the LAUSD overall, and 44 percent in traditional schools statewide. The breakdown of math results followed a similar pattern.

The results represent the online scores of the state's 3rd through 8th graders, as well as 11th graders, from 48,000 charters and 37,000 magnet schools. The numbers paint a clear picture: Students from LAUSD magnet schools are not only being prepared effectively for college and future careers, they are also outperforming their peers in other schools by significant margins throughout the state, at every grade level.

Magnet schools explicitly promote school integration and diversity as a core mission. Unlike charters, magnet schools do not operate autonomously, outside the public school system, and are never run by for-profit organizations. This provides a level of direct accountability to decisionmakers and taxpayers. Most magnet schools also adhere to collective bargaining agreements made with educators. . . .

Friday, January 15, 2016

From "What LA Unified needs now," (January 15) it is apparent that neither the Times nor new superintendent King know what LA Unified needs now. The biggest problem is poverty, a problem shared by many big city school districts. Eighty percent of LAUSD students live in poverty, far above the national average of 25%, already unacceptable and well above that of other industrialized countries. High poverty means food deprivation, lack of health care, and little access to books: All of these have devastating effects on school performance. The best teaching in the world will not help if students are hungry, ill, and have little to read. What LAUSD needs to do now is protect children from the impact of poverty. This means improve school food programs, school nurses, and libraries: To paraphrase education expert Susan Ohanian, our goals should be no child left unfed, no child without health care, and no child without access to books.

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Posted as a comment on "Opt-out activities aim to build on
momentum in states,"Education
Week.http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/14/opt-out-activists-aim-to-build-on-momentum.html

The opt-out movement seems to have
worked: the new education law did not increase the amount of required testing
(except for adding some science tests), and the president supports limits on
the amount of testing done.

But the testing industrial complex
is not giving up easily, working eagerly to establish what could mean testing
every day. It is called competency-based education.

Competency-based education (CBE) is a radical and expensive innovation
that replaces regular instruction with online "modules" that students
work through on their own. Students take tests in order to move to the next
module. It is being pushed by computer companies without consulting educators
and without a proper research base.

The new education law specifically encourages competence-based education
and testing (sections 1201 and 1204).

Recently VAPPE picked up a major political endorsement in the Green Party of San Diego County. In general the Green Party, unlike the Democratic Party, has been very astute on the grave dangers of charters, vouchers, and all other school privatization schemes proffered by the plutocrat class. Green Party Presidential Candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a stalwart defender of public education. The following are quotes from two different interviews, as well as a video of Dr. Stein and Kshama Sawant discussing the scourge of charter schools.

Public education is another example where there has been a complete scam [regarding privatization]—charter schools are not better than public schools—and in many cases they are far worse. They cherry-pick their students so they can show better test scores. The treasure of our public schools system has been assaulted by the process of privatization. (Phone interview on 2016 presidential race by OnTheIssues.org , Jul 6, 2015)

Unfortunately, charter schools draw down on funding for our public schools, and they siphon off the more capable students and their families. At the same time they concentrate the real social problems in the public schools, which is guaranteed to collapse our public system from within. The advantages of charters ought to be features of all public schools: family engagement, additional resources and budget, and so on. (2011 AmericansElect interview questionnaire with Jill Stein, Dec 21, 2011)

VAPPE also picked up support of the brilliant Sharon Higgins of The Perimeter Primate, Charter School Scandals, and The Broad Report. Higgins was one of the first to bring to public consciousness the fact that the largest chain of taxpayer funded charter schools in the United States is run by a shadowy religious cult — the Gülen Network. I've used Higgins research extensively in documenting the ties between Gülen friendly Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board members elected with big money from the corporate charter school industry and their billionaire backers. Both political opportunist Monica Garcia, and charter school profiteer Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez have deep ties to the secretive Gülen religious cult.

There are volunteers working hard throughout the state to make this happen. But we will still need to raise funds to gather all the necessary signatures. Please make a donation to this campaign - every little bit will help.

Robert D. Skeels is a social justice writer, public education advocate, and immigrant rights activist. He lives, works, writes, and organizes in Los Angeles with his wife and cats. Robert holds a BA in Classical Civilization from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a JD from Peoples College of Law (PCL). A US Navy Veteran, he is a proud member of Veterans for Peace. A student of Liberation Theology and Paulo Freire's work, Robert devotes much time towards volunteer work for 12 step, church, homeless advocacy, and grassroots groups. Robert's articles and essays appear in publications including Jacobin, Truthout, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Schools Matter, Daily Censored, Regeneración, K12NN, LA Progressive, and The Los Angeles Daily News. In 2013 Robert ran for the LAUSD School Board against a billionaire funded corporate reform candidate, finishing second in a field of five, with over 5,200 votes.